BYPASSED is a community voice project + feature length documentary that aims to change the way we think about Coatesville, PA.

We all know of a town like this: a place you've been warned to bypass instead of cut through, a place known more for its stigma than its stories. This documentary serves to go beyond the biased local media and to share the real Coatesville with the outside world.

Sarah Alderman, Creator and Project Director

Our director’s roots go many generations deep in both her mother’s and father’s families. Sarah attended parochial school while living in the city, which she left only reluctantly as a teenager. With the passing of her grandmother in 2013, her last close connection to the city vanished. She began researching for this project in 2015.

Sarah owns an internationally published wedding photography studio and photo booth company. She earned her degree in Anthropology with minors in Psychology and Ethnic Studies at WCU, and her passion for the human experience led her to train her lens on her hometown of Coatesville, PA. While wedding photography pays the bills, the power of representation in media and its ability to change lives and influence minds toward social justice is Sarah’s true passion.

With the privilege of class mobility on her side, and an early career in real estate that spanned her 20s, Sarah realized the many stigmas and prejudices that the outside community held against Coatesville, many rooted in race and socioeconomics. Part love letter to her city, part defiant rally cry, BYPASSED was created as a place for Coatesville’s residents to tell their stories in their own words, and as a way to be sure those with roots take stake in the city as it stands on the brink of redevelopment.

Sarah is recently married (Sean Bramley, CASH ‘09) and living in the 19320 with her twin daughters, Tessa and Olivia.

Ryan Beacher, Director of Photography

Ryan is a graduate of CASH, Class of 2009. While his passion for filmmaking as a hobby was ignited in high school, he would go on to make an actual career of it, working for high profile celebrities, directing short films, and music videos.

Having worked in the wedding industry as a cinematographer himself, Ryan joined the project at the perfect time, as a freelancer with open weekday availability. With his RED Scarlet Cinema Cam and Phantom drone (his payment from the project), Ryan created the Hollywood-level footage you’ll see throughout our film.

Right after filming wrapped, Ryan and his fiancé purchased a home in NJ, welcomed their first son, Brady, and got married. Shortly thereafter, Ryan was recruited by an advertising firm and is now working in NYC and Philadelphia. We miss him on the production team, but are grateful for the incredible film he helped us to create.

CJ Witherspoon, Editor and Assistant Producer

Like Ryan, CJ is a CASH alum (‘97) with a long resume in the filmmaking world. The owner of his own production company, 3Spoons, CJ is now a full-time self-employed entrepreneur. Until 2019, he had invested over a decade at local retail powerhouse QVC as a video producer.

With skills like that, it took a sizable investment from our director’s own pocket to bring CJ on, but he is the ‘special sauce’ that will take this project to completion. CJ is currently finishing our first release, a web series of selected standalone interviews, which will premier in August 2019. Then he and Sarah will move on to finalize a feature-style film (one that can be played as a traditional movie from start to finish). This will be released in the winter.

CJ and his wife Halli have a daughter and are living in Chester County, PA.